


Situation Normal

by Fistful_of_Gamma_Rays



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, injury aftercare, taking a hit for the other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:42:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25788280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fistful_of_Gamma_Rays/pseuds/Fistful_of_Gamma_Rays
Summary: Sometimes, it's the hits you do see coming.
Relationships: Keith & Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 70
Collections: Gentronweek





	Situation Normal

It takes less than two hours for Shiro to regret coming here.

They’re on the swelteringly hot jungle moon of an Empire colony. Pidge and Hunk are in one of the satellite bases, extracting the information they’re looking for with Lance standing watch. He and Keith are here at the main base to draw as much attention away from the real intrusion as possible. It should be straightforward - they know the security measures for these kinds of facilities by now. They’re used to sentries and drones and they know how to get through them. But something about this base is important enough for it to have a live crew instead of the disposable, predictable sentries, and by sheer, dumb luck, they run blind into a patrol running late on its rounds. Things go south quickly. 

Their opponents are too well-trained to fire a weapon so close to an exterior wall, but that’s the extent of their good luck. It’s the kind of fight he hates, a close, messy hand-to-hand struggle in the dark that sets all his memories of the arena loose. He can only just make out the shapes of the two facing off with him, and he has to scramble to stay out of their reach in the claustrophobic hallway. They’re bigger than him, heavier than him, and if they can get him on the ground it’ll be over instantly. Something buried in the back of his brain is holding its breath waiting for the roar of the crowd.

(Even after all this time he still expects it. Some part of him is still stuck in that pit, and he’s terrified that it’ll never climb out.)

Behind him, he can distantly hear footfalls and the occasional grunt of impact from Keith’s fight, but he can’t afford to let it distract him. The guard on his left darts forward, snapping his baton out in a quick strike for Shiro’s neck. He steps to the side and tries to circle himself out of the other’s reach. Something happens behind his back - there’s a quick burst of movement, then a crunch and an awful, rasping keen. It’s not Keith - _it’s not Keith_ \- but his blood freezes in his veins and that instant of hesitation is all the time the guard needs to chamber his weapon and spin it back around for his temple. He has no choice but to bring up his arm to parry, but it leaves him momentarily immobilized, his side dangerously exposed. He catches a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye and braces himself for the blow. 

It never lands. 

Instead, there’s a hoarse shout, and Keith is somehow between him and the guard. The baton slams into his side with an impact Shiro can feel in his bones, and he drops like a stone. Shiro’s heart leaps into his throat, and he stops giving a damn about consequences. 

He seizes the moment of confusion Keith has bought him and steps into the parry, dangerously into his opponent’s reach. The prosthetic clamps onto the guard’s arm in the gap under the gauntlet and he clenches it as hard as he can, thumb digging into the vulnerable underside of the wrist. Something pops under his fingers and the guard screams. The other one is moving fast, edging around Keith’s prone body to wind up for another swing at him. He leans back on his heels and heaves, manages to wrench the one he’s holding into the other’s path. They go down in a tangle of limbs, and the fight is over. He incapacitates both of them and spares a quick look for the one Keith fought, already unconscious. Once he’s sure it’s clear, he drops to his haunches next to Keith. He’s conscious, painfully pulling himself up into a sitting position through gritted teeth, and Shiro lets out a relieved breath.

“Hey, hey,” Shiro says. “Take it easy. You okay?”

“Yeah,” he says, and takes Shiro’s hand. His voice cuts out in a gasp as he pulls himself up, and his face goes pale. His other hand clutches his side.

Shiro’s stomach drops, and he remembers the awful crack of the baton ringing out into the hallway. “No, you’re not. Here, lean on me.”

His shoulder goes under Keith’s arm on his good side and slowly, they climb to their feet. Keith makes a wretched little sound as they get upright, followed by a wheezing cough that pinches the skin around his eyes white with pain. Shiro’s heart beats out a terrified staccato rhythm in his chest while he thinks about all the things that blow could have broken or punctured.

Aloud, he lets out a breath. “Okay. We’re going back the way we came. One step at a time, slow and steady.”

Gingerly, Keith disentangles himself. Shiro watches him closely, hand hovering at his shoulder. He holds himself stiffly, slightly hunched, but he’s steady on his feet. He breathes out carefully and frowns. “What about the mission?”

_Screw the mission_ , is what he wants to say, but it’s probably not setting a great example. He gestures at the unconscious bodies. “These guys are going to miss their check-in pretty soon. They’re going to have to spend more time looking for us if we’re not actually here to be found.”

Keith considers this, and at last nods. “All right. Let’s go.”

Shiro eyes him critically, taking in his crooked posture and the tightness at the corners of his mouth. “Are you going to be okay to walk?”

Keith gives another nod. “It’ll be faster if I’m moving on my own. We’re not going to have a lot of time.”

He hesitates for a long moment, but Keith is upright and coherent and he’s right that they need to move fast. “All right,” he says at last. “But if you need help, don’t stay quiet about it.”

“Okay.” Keith pauses and gives him a tight smile. “Shiro. I’ll be fine.”

He lets out a breath. “C’mon. Let’s get out of here.”

* * *

Miraculously, they get out without further incident. The alarm goes off as they’re making their exit, and they steal off into the jungle, the klaxon echoing behind them.

Keith is still walking under his own power, his face pinched and wan, steps hitching on the uneven ground. Once he’s sure they’ve made a clean escape, Shiro drifts to his side. 

“You need a hand?”

Keith braces himself against his shoulder. “Thanks,” he says quietly.

“Come on. Almost there.”

They trek slowly through the thick, swampy growth, steps muffled by the thick earth. Keith’s a solid, heavy weight on his shoulder, but he can’t get the sight of him stepping in front of that strike out of his head. He blows out a breath, tries to get the jittery feeling out of his chest. Keith eyes him curiously, but doesn’t comment.

Finally, they reach the Lion. “Let me take a look at your side,” he says.

Keith frowns. “It’s fine. We’re supposed to rendezvous in a couple of hours anyways. I can get Coran to look at it then.”

“We have a medical kit. There’s no reason for you to be miserable for longer than you have to be.” He shoots him a sideways glance. “Humor me.”

Keith rolls his eyes, but his expression softens. “Fine.”

He steers them into the Black Lion and gets Keith seated on one of the narrow passenger benches behind the cockpit. By the time he’s pried the medical kit out of its place by the pilot’s seat, Keith has already unhooked the pauldron and breastplate and is carefully working the undersuit off his shoulder on his bad side. He finally gets it off, and Shiro winces. There’s a tender, swollen lump the size of his hand over the bottom of his ribcage, already turning blue and purple. It’s crossed by an oozing red stripe where the breastplate caught and dragged the tough material with enough force to abrade the skin. Keith prods gently at it and flinches.

“That looks like it hurts.”

Keith grimaces, still pale and tight around the eyes. “It’s just broken ribs, Shiro. I’ve had those before.”

He’s one-hundred percent sure that Keith means this to be reassuring, but it’s anything but. He rummages in the kit and comes up with an anti-inflammatory, disinfectant, and an analgesic pad. “Here.” He hands the anti-inflammatory over to Keith, who swallows it without protest. He takes the other items over to the bench and begins to dab at the scrape with the disinfectant. Keith sucks in a long, hissing breath through his teeth.

He’s as gentle as he can be, but it must hurt something fierce. Keith puts up with it stoically, his knuckles white on the edge of the bench. He can’t feel anything misaligned, at least, but there’s so much swelling it’s hard to tell and he doesn’t dare put any more pressure on it. He tries not to think about the kind of damage it would have done without the armor. 

“You shouldn’t have taken that hit,” he says quietly after a moment. 

Keith’s jaw sets belligerently. “You’d have taken it if I hadn’t.”

“That’s not the point.”

“So I should have just let that guy hit you?”

“You shouldn’t be putting yourself at risk for me.” It comes out more tersely than he means it to.

“You’ve done as much for me.” He blinks, and Keith sends him a sharp glance. “You think I don’t get that you were putting your reputation on the line for me at the Garrison?”

This is so wildly inequivalent that he’s caught flatfooted. “That’s not the same.”

“Bullshit. You had a whole career lined up there. If you hadn’t stuck your neck out for me back then, I’d be just another dropout now, burning out in some shit job.”

It’s such a specific vision of an unhappy future, delivered so succinctly and matter-of-factly, that it rocks Shiro back on his mental heels. 

Sometimes talking with Keith is like that now, familiar ground leading up to unseen pitfalls. He keeps expecting the conversation to take the old path it would have taken before Kerberos, but Keith will jump its tracks to some new route, and he’s left blindly scrambling to follow.

He takes a breath. It’s still in no wise an equivalent in his mind - damage to his reputation or his career (such as it is) is never going to match up with bodily injury - but it’s clear that to Keith, at least, the stakes are comparable. He’s not sure where to begin addressing that. “You deserved the same chances as everybody else,” he settles on for the moment. “Sticking up for you was the least I could do and I never regretted it.”

Keith cuts him a flat look. “I got expelled.”

He still doesn’t know the story behind that. “Sure,” he says deliberately. “And I’ve been AWOL for over a year now.”

Keith lets out a quiet snort at that. The scrape’s about as clean as it’s going to get. He puts the disinfectant to the side and unwraps the analgesic pad. “Here. Hold this in place.” Keith obligingly presses the pad to his side and he begins taping it down.

“It’s not an exchange,” he says quietly after a moment. “I helped you out at the Garrison because I wanted to. You don’t ever owe me anything for that, all right?”

“And I took that hit because I wanted to,” Keith fires back. “It goes both ways, Shiro.”

“You shouldn’t-”

“I shouldn’t what?” Keith cuts in. “Put myself at risk? I’m doing that anyway. We’re all doing it. I get to decide the risks I’m willing to take.”

It pushes him off-balance again. If he had imagined Keith saying those words a couple of years ago, he would have imagined them coming out angry. But right now, Keith just meets his eyes levelly, intense and sober. It’s a glimpse, of the kind he gets more and more often, of the adult Keith is starting to grow into. And as much as he admires the intelligent, brave person he’s becoming, he can’t help but wonder sometimes what a Keith who had not had to make decisions about where and when he’ll risk his life would be like.

It’s an unfair speculation. Shiro is well aware that he’s not the same person he was when he left Earth either. He’s well aware that _Keith_ is aware of it. There are silences between them that didn’t use to be there, gaps in the conversation that press down on them with the weight of an ocean. Keith doesn’t talk about that year in the desert, and Shiro doesn’t talk about his time in the arena.

He misses how it used to be. Misses the familiarity and easy flow of conversation. And it’s not as if those things are really gone, or that there weren’t things they trod carefully around before. But they’ve grown apart a little. Grown up a little. Their edges don’t match up the same way.

They can’t go back to the people they were, and maybe it’s selfish to want to. Keith’s not the kid he was in the Garrison, and he’s right that they’re all taking risks now. Maybe some agency is the least they’re owed.

Doesn’t mean it’s not hard.

He takes in a harsh breath and lets it out again. “You’re right. That’s your call to make.” Keith blinks. Shiro catches his eyes and gives him a smile that feels more forced than he’d like. “Just go easy on me. You scared me when you went down like that.”

Keith’s expression softens and he glances away. “Didn’t really think about it,” he admits after a second. “Just saw him aiming for you while you couldn’t do anything about it and went for him.”

That puts another spike of fear through his chest, but he wrestles it down. “That would have put me on the floor too if it had hit. Not sure what would have happened if you hadn’t stepped in.” He meets Keith’s eyes. “Thanks.”

Keith’s leaning his head back against the wall, still wearing that serious expression. “You scared me too.” He hesitates for a long moment and his gaze drifts to the side. “I know you don’t like when it ends up hand-to-hand like that,” he murmurs.

Shiro feels himself go still. He swallows. “That obvious, huh?”

Keith just shrugs with his good shoulder and a quiet falls between them. After a bit, Shiro lets his breath out. “I’ll be more careful if you’ll be more careful.”

Keith cracks an eye and the corner of his mouth tips up. “Deal.”

He thumbs down the last edge of tape and straightens up. “That’s about the best I can do for now. Any better?”

Cautiously, Keith sits himself upright. He winces a little, but some of the tension is gone from around his eyes. “Yeah. Thanks.” 

“Anytime.” Without thinking about it, Shiro reaches out and ruffles his hair like he would have back when Keith was just a scrawny, scowly kid hardly up past his waist. Keith lets out a barely audible, exasperated-sounding _“haah”_ , but under his mussed hair he’s smiling. Shiro smiles too, and leans back on the bench next to him.

They’ll be all right.

**Author's Note:**

> Gentron 2020, prompts "taking a hit for the other" and "injury aftercare".
> 
> Tumblr [here](https://fistfulofgammarays.tumblr.com/) if you want to talk at me.


End file.
